Independent travel service sellers (e.g., Orbitz, Inc., Expedia, Inc.) are travel service sellers that are not related to only one travel service provider. Since they are not related to only one travel service provider, they can generate travel options from many different travel service providers, giving a customer a broader selection of choices. Travel options include itineraries (e.g., a sequence of one or more legs of travel (e.g., flights)) for which a fare can be generated. Independent travel service sellers generally, use automated systems, accessible over the Internet, to determine travel options by applying fares to scheduling information such as flights, routes, itineraries and so forth. Application of fares to scheduling information involves use of certain rules. These rules are used to determine, for example whether a fare can be used for a particular passenger itinerary. One example of such rules in the airline industry are those published by the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO). To accommodate automated systems, ATPCO developed data structures for use with such automated systems to determine applicability of fares to schedule information using the rules. ATPCO defines these data structures so that travel providers (e.g., airlines) can define their rules for their fares using predefined fields and values of the ATPCO data structures.
To compete for business and to try to retain travelers, travel providers (e.g., airlines, bus companies, rail companies) have developed frequent traveler programs where the traveler receives some award credit (e.g., miles) for travel with a particular travel provider. These frequent travel programs allow the traveler to redeem this award credit for free tickets, upgrades, and other services. In some cases, travel providers have partnered with one or more other travel providers to increase the benefits of the frequent traveler programs by allowing both award credit and/or redemption to be given by the partners. Typically, to redeem the award credit that a traveler has accumulated, the traveler calls a customer service representative of the travel provider. Internet travel service sellers do not automatically calculate travel availability for redemption of accumulated award credit in frequent traveler programs.
These options can be displayed in the form of a single list of the possible itineraries from which the traveler may select. Such a display approach makes it difficult to clearly compare, discriminate, focus, and assimilate criteria and information that are likely to be important to the traveler.